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HOW SHALL WE VOTE? 



It is to quiet citizens that I address myself 
— not to professed politicians, nor to crowded 
meetings, nor excited assemblies — but to those 
patriotic and more silent citizens who seek for 
no oflfice, but desire to vote in such manner as 
best to secure the characteristic blessings of our 
Government. I do not propose to argue the 
great questions of public policy now before us. 
The time for argument is mostly passed, and the 
time for reflection and decision has arrived. I 
propose only to briefly state the case. 

All parties agree that this is the most import- 
ant Presidential election which we have ever 
held. The character of our institutions forever 
seems to depend upon it. The great question 
is : Shall Slavery be extended by law into the 
Free Territories of the United States, and be 
fortified and made impregnable — an eterr,al 
characteristic of our Kepublic ? There are the 
somewhat local questions — the Buchanan Ost- 
end Circular — the robbing of a.friendly nation 
of her territories in time of peace — aad the 
question of a free piiblic highway across the 
continent, through our own free territory — the 
Pacific railroad. These are only branches of 
the other question. The iorcible seizure and 
annexation of Cuba is but a measure to fortify 
Slavery, by adding new slave territory to the 
United States. Let it be established that Cuba 
must come into the Union as free territory, and 
the gentlemen who met at Ostend would throw 
up their hands in pious horror at the proposi- 
tion to steal the queen of the Antilles. And 
let Slavery be established throughout the Ter- 
ritories of the Northwest, so that trains of caged 
or chained slaves (cattle trains) may be sent as 
merchandise across the continent, and the 
South will have no constitutional scruples 
against the Pacific Railroad. 

The question is the great question of " the 
liberties of America," as the phrase was in 
1776, and this is the only question. One great 
portion of the people believes that Slavery is a 
moral, political and social evil, existing in 
some of the States by their own laws, and that 
whether it be or not necessary to their present 
industrial and social position, it is a question 
for those States alone ; but that its character 
and effect upon the morals, the manners, the 



reputation and the prosperity of all States where 
it has existed witliout necessity, demonstrates 
that it ought never to be extended to our now- 
Free Territories. 

Another powerful pprtion of the people — the 
Southern people — believe that Slavery is a 
blessing to every community — that it is the 
natural relation between capital and labor^ — • 
between employer and employed ; that the 
Slave-trade ought to be renewed, and that 
Slavery ought to be extended throughout the 
United States and all her Territories. 

The present excitement is the conflict of 
these two opinions. It is not a question whether 
it be lawful to hold slaves in those States where 
Slaveiy now exists, nor whether those slaves 
be well or ill-treated — sympathy for the slave 
has nothing to do with it. The slave himself 
is outside of the discussion. He is in the keep- 
ing of States and laws to which the Northern 
people are not a party and for which they are 
not responsible. They did not make those 
laws and they cannot repeal them. It is the 
free and not the slave, the white, not the black, 
whose interests are the subject of discussion. 

So, too, it is not with the Southern States or 
their institutions that we have to do. Virginia 
and South Carolina, and the other Southern 
States, are outside of the discussion. We look 
only to that immense unsettled territorj' 
where there is now no Slavery, and which, 
thirty-five years ago, was dedicated by law 
to Freedom by the consent of the people, 
and not of any particular State, and for 
which every American citizen is responsi- 
ble. Shall that territory be blessed with 
civil and religious liberty and Republican mu- 
tuality — shall it be the land of Freedom or of 
Slavery ? The territories are larger than any 
ten States of the Union, and are to be inhabit- 
ed by millions of people. 

I do not regret that what is called a sec- 
tional issue has been forced upon us in this 
canvass. I see the finger of God in it. I hail 
it as the harbinger of a better day. It is pre- 
sented to us under peculiar circumstances. 
Heretofore this great question of Freedom and 
Slaver}' has been left to the politicians, to party 
arrangements, personal trading and unworthy 
bargains and compromises. It has been the 
political makeweight of corrupt men and selfish 
place-hunters, and how Freedom has sped 
under it we all know. We have gone from 
bad to worse, till the General Government 
cannot protect its own legislators from being 
beaten by bludgeons in the streets, in the pub- 
lic conveyances, and in the Senate chamber, 



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2 



for expressing sympathy for Freedom. Devout j 
women are imprisoned for teaching human ' 
beings to read the blessed Word of God. 
American citizens are driven from their farms, 
their stores, their business and their families, 
and compelled to fly by night to the Free 
States to escape lynching, tar and feathers and 
assassination, because they belong to the politi- 
cal party that is opposed to the extension of 
Slavery. The great truths of tlie Declaration 
of Independence, for which our fatliers pledged \ 
their lives, their fortunes and their sacred j 
honor, are called glittering generalities, intol- 1 
erable and hateful ; and Kansas, a Northern [ 
Territory, is made the scene of oppressions and j 
cruelties, by the side of which the wrongs of ! 
the Colonies before the Revolution are noth- t 
ing — all the wrongs of twelve years before the 
Eevolution, in all the Colonies, bear no com- I 
parison with those that have been perpetrated , 
in Kansas during the last twelve months, for 
the purpose of extending Slavery, at the point 
of the bayonet, over territories of immense ex- 
tent, solemnly consecrated to Freedom by the 
nation by public statute in 1820. 

In 1820 a law was passed that there should 
be no Slavery in the Territories now north of 
30° 30' N. latitude. 

What a contest there was then ! Those of us 
who remember it see more freshly than it is re- 
corded in history, with what desperation 
Slavery was forced across the Mississippi ! In 
1 836 with what blasphemous defiance the right 
of petition was trodden under foot and the 
sanctity and freedom of the public mails at- 
tacked ! In 1850 what a strife, but how in- 
effectual, to resist the new fetters for Freedom ! 
In 1854 how the solemn and sacred compact 
of 1820 was dishonorably rescinded ! and how 
now our brothers' blood cries unto God from 
the ground in Kansas I Kansas is entirely north 
of 37°. Its climate is like that of Ohio, Illi- 
nois, and Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and 
Virginia. The capitals of Illinois, Indiana 
and Ohio, and the City of Philadelphia, are 
all further south than the Northern boundary 
of Kansas. That boundary extended would 
run nearly through the middle of New-Jersey. 
If Slavery be necessary to the burning heats of 
equatorial climates, if it be necessary to cotton 
fields and rice swamps and sugar plantations, 
it is not necessary to Kansas. There is not the 
apology of climate or productions to place 
slaves there or to exclude the thrift and pros- 
perity of Free Labor, small ' farms, various 
productions, and small happy homesteads scat- 
tered all over the land. Slavery is pressed 
upon Kansas only that thereby the whole North 
may be fatally enslaved, and that as now in 
Delaware one of her Senators declares to his 
consituents in relation to something against 
Slavery said by a Northern Senator, "Had he 
said it in my presence I would have beaten 
him to a jelly ;" as in Maryland citizens, 
eaceably assembled for mere political consult- 
ation, are compelled to flee for fear of assas- 
sination ; as in Virginia,for the mere expression 
of opinion unfriendly to Slavery, citizens are 



compelled to flee to the Free States because 
they belong to the party that is opposed to 
the extension of Slavery ; as at the seat of 
the Federal Government, (the place set apart 
for free discussion,) for the mere discussion 
of questions of public policy, editors and mem- 
bers of Congrese from the Free States are 
beaten down from behind and nearly murdered, 
so hereafter it shall be in the hitherto Free 
North. 

All along it has been flung in our face that 
the triumphs of Slavery have been accom- 
plished by Northern votes, and so they have 
been. But who would be willing to have his 
name stand opposite these votes? Those 
traitors to Freedom will be forgotten when 
their names shall cease to be a stench in the 
nostrils of the friends of Liberty, and not be- 
fore ! 

We have been thus defeated because the 
voice of the people has not been taken. Now, 
God in his Providence has smitten the politi- 
cians with judicial blindness and madness, and 
has said practically to every individual Ameri- 
can, in his sovereign capacity. Stand up and , 
say this day whom ye will sei-ve. If the Lord 
be" God, follow him, and if Baal be God, fol- 
I low him. If you desire Freedom, say so — if 
I you prefer Slavery, say so. Be ready to an- 
swer. God is calling the Ayes and Noes on 
this question to put every man on record upon 
it. Is there one friend of Freedom that does 
not rejoice in the opportunity to ascertain the 
extent of modern degeneracy? 

Party associations and sympathies have 
heretofore hindered us in the expression 
of our real sentiments — now Divine Provi- 
dence has delivered us all from such 
compulsion. Party lines are obliterated 
and party discipline has lost its force. Par- 
ties are really broken up. There is no party 
allegiance that compels any citizen to vote for 
any one of the candidates. Col. Fremont is 
a Democrat from his boyhood of the school of 
Jefferson and Jackson. Mr. Buchanan is 
of the routed party and the exploded princi- 
ples of Calhoun and McDuffie, who arrayed 
the State of South Carolina against the Gov- 
ernment, in open civil war and rebellion, 
twenty-five years ago. Mr. Fillmore is not a 
Whig — he belongs to no party. The Whig 
Party has no candidates nor organization. Its 
great leaders bore a barren sceptre. They are 
dead, no son of theirs succeeding. The Demo- 
cratic Party, broken to pieces half-a-dozen 
times in as many ye^rs, has no leaders that the 
party can follow \\-ithont forswearing all their 
principles. With such an opportunity, who 
would not yield to the temptation to follow the 
dictates of his own conscience ? 

As it is the first opportunity, so it may be 
the last. 

All these aggressions by the South have been 
resisted. We have never consented to them, 
but we have been subdued, and we have 
yielded much that we might save some- 
thing. We have been subdued in return 
for forbearance and liberalitv. We have 



never failed to treat our Southern breth- 
ren with more than a generous share of our 
consideration. 

When the Constitution was formed a 
ratio of representation was consented to by 
which now the North has but one member 
of the House of Kepresentatives for every 
20,706 white males over 21 years of age, (and 
these are the people in all the States,) while 
the South has one for every 12,108 — nearly 
twice their just proportion ; and in the Senate 
the Nortli has one Senator for eveiy 113,855, 
while the South has one for every 48,424 — a 
great deal more than twice their proportion. 
Taken altogether, the representation of South- 
ern voters in Congress is more than twice as 
great as their equal proportion — an inequality 
and injustice which nothing but a spirit of con- 
ciliation could make tolerable to the North. 
This first great advantage to the South has 
been never disturbed, and is of itself enough to 
account for all the victories of the South. 

We also gave them the seat of Government 
in the Slave States, surrounded on all sides by 
Pro-Slaverj' influences — another immense ad- 
vantage. 

If a Northern man would recover his labor- 
ing animals found in a Slave State, he can re- 
cover them only by an appeal to the Courts in 
that State and to the verdict of her juries. He 
must take the law's delay pt his own expense — 
but let a slaveholder claim that a black man 
(his laboring animal) has escaped into a Free 
State, and the slaveholder seizes the alleged 
fugitive, by the hair and the throat — tears him 
from his family and property — drags him be- 
fore a single individual who is hired by double 
fees to decree him to be a slave without Judge 
or Juiy, and the General Government pays the 
expense of transporting him in chains to Slav- 
ery. What an inequality of privilege in favor 
of Slavery the North allows to the South ! 

And relying up n the good faith and honor of 
the South, when Territories north of the Mis- 
souri Compromise line should be ready, we have 
consented to the admission of the States south 
of that line, but when our turn came southern 
honor has failed us and the restriction is re- 
pealed. 

As the natural result of these inequalities, a 
vast majority of the officers of the General Gov- 
ernment in the army and the navy and the civil 
service are given to the South. 

And so of the highest honors — of the twelve 
Presidents of the United States, chosen by the 
people, all but three have been of southern 
birth. Out of sixty-eight years the Goveni- 
nient has been twenty years only in the hands 
of Northei-n Presidents, and forty-eight in the 
hands of Southern Presidents ; and for thirty 
years past all the candidates of the party uni- 
formly opposed to the extension of Slavery to 
Free Territory have been of Southern birth — 
incapable of looking upon the Slavery question 
from the fanatical point of view — Clay, WietJ 
Harrison, Taylor, Scott, Fremont. 

Of the exalted officers who. have the most 
controlling influence in directing the aflfairs of 



the legal and admisistrative policy of the Gov- 
ernment, the comparison of the natives of the 
North and those of the South is equally strik- 
ing : 

Free. Slave. 

Presidents -» 3 9 

Attorneys General 5 14 

Judges Supreme Court 11 17 

Pi-esidents of Senate pro tern 16 61 

Speakers of the House 11 21 

Total Tie 122 

And this while by the Census Keport the white 
males over 21 years of age was in 1852 : 

Free States ' 3,644,341 

Slave States .■1,45'2,9T3 

Difference , '. 2,191,365 

And when we look at the rights guaranteed 
to all the citizens ^ the Constitution, how 
much greater still is the practical inequality ! 

"The citizens of each State shall be entitled 
to all privileges and immuiiities of citizens of 
the several States." 

" Congi'ess shall make no law abridging the 
freedom of speech or of the press." 

"The right of the people to keep and bear 
arms shall not be infringed." 

"The right of the people to be secure in 
their persons, houses, papers and effects against 
unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be 
violated." (Vide the Constitution passim.) 

The booksellers and publishers, and printers 
and editors, a numerous, valuable, and peace- 
able class of our citizens — what sort of privi- 
leges and immunities would they enjoy 
if they should remove to the Slave 
States with their stock of books, their 
printing-presses, and their newspapers, and 
their freedom of speech and the press ? And so 
of clergymen, and lecturers, and professors and 
teachers — nothing could save them from tar and 
feathers, and ignominious assassination, but 
hurried flight by night. The right freely to dis- 
cuss the conduct and purposes of our nilers, 
and to vote for those we prefer — what an ines- 
timable right of the American people ! — but 
what friend of Freedom dare to do it now, un- 
armed and unguarded in the land of Slavery ? 
Congress is the supreme power in the Terri- 
tories — all legislation in the Territories is 
mediately or immediately from Congress. 
E^ansas is still under the legislative powers of 
the Union. How many citizens seeking new 
homes there have been murdered and scalped 
even by Pro-Slavery ruffians ! How many 
burning dwellings have lighted up the few 
clearings in the wilderness ! How many print- 
ing offices and presses have been destroyed ! 
How many stands of arms have been wrested 
from citizens in a new countrj-, infested by wild 
beasts and bloody men ! 

What bloody laws have been enacted to sub- 
ject the citizen to fine, imprisonment, and igno- 
minious death, for having a book, circulating a 
newspaper, expressing an opinion unfriendly 
to the extension of Slavery to Kansas, and even 
for not taking oaths to sustain such atrocious 
legislation ! — and when the people have peace- 
ably assembled with a view to redress their 
grievances, in the same manner in which orga- 



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7 



nic legislation is always performed in this conn- 
trr, these friends of the People have heen ar- 
rested and kept in prison, to be tried for the 
pretended offence of treason — and the Army of 
the United States, under the so-called flag of 
Freedom, by orders of a Pro- Slavery Presi- 
dent, has marched to the Legislative Hall, and 
dispersed by force the representatives of the 
People, whose only alleged offence was that 
they sought to establish free institutions. 

Is this the Union in which we entered in 
1788, "to establish justice, and to secure the 
blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
terity ?" Is this a jiist and equal partnership ? 
Are we of the North free in such a state of 
things? Col. Feesiont, the pride and the 
honor of his country and the world, is he 
free, when he is deprived of the right of being 
voted for, in many of the States ? 

But some of our Southern fellow-citizens in- 
sist that, by prohibiting the extension of Slav- 
ery to the Free Temtories, it would prevent 
their going there, and deny them their share in 
those Territories. It is not possible that there 
should be a more transparent fallacy. We do 
not prevent their going there — we do not ob- 
ject to their going there. They are all welcome 
there — they can buy land there, and reside 
there. In every particular they are equal there 
to the citizens of the North. There is no dis- 
tinction in law, or in fact, there, between the 
North and the South. If Slavery shall be pro- 
hibited there, then neither Northern nor South- 
ern men can keep slaves there. The laws of 
the United States have for years provided that 
no person shall take ardent spirits into the In- 
dian country, and that it shall be lawful for 
any person to take and destroy any ardent spi- 
rits or wine found in the Indian country, — (4 
Stat. 732, Sec. 20,) and that no person shall set 
up or continue any distillery in the Indian 
country, under a penalty of $^1,000, and that 
it shall be the duty of the Superintendent of 
Indian Affairs forthwith to destroy and break 
up the same. — {Hid. Sec. 21.) 

By another law the importation of all inde- 
cent and obscene prints, lithographs, paintings, 
engravings, &c., are prohibited. If imported 
thoy shall be seized and forfeited, "and the 
said articles shall be forthwith destroyed."- 
(r> do., 56(i, § 28.) What now if the dealers 
in ardent spirits, and the distillers, and the 
dealers in indecent prints and ])ictures should 
determine to dissolve the Union — to march to 
Washington and take possession of the ar- 
chives of the Government and the Treasury, 
because of these laws which prevent them 
from taking their jtroperty to the territories ! ! 
The Northern and the Southern man are on 
equal terms in all these respects. The latitude 
or the point of the compass is nothing ; who- 
ever comes there with his forbidden property 
will lose it. His slaves will be free, his pic- | 
tures and prints will be destroyed, his rum 
will be poured out upon the ground, and his: 
distillery burnt down. This property claim, i 
this slave in the territory claim, is hollow and 
nnreal. The claim is not to take property | 



there, but to take laws there which the Con- 
gress or the territory have never enacted. The 
claim is that a single Carolinian or Virginian 
slaveholder shall, by the laws of his own 
State, a thousand miles from that State, have 
the privilege of importing and planting and 
spreading in the territor / a poison by 
tlie side of which indecent prints and 
maddening drink are blessings. Is there 
anything so demoralizing as Slavery — any- 
thing so inconsistent with moral health — so 
dangerous to the peace of a community — so 
hostile to the freedom, equality and mutuality 
: of American Institutions? 

Where Slavery exists and produces its proper \ 
fruits can an American citizen receive through 
the public mails such^mail matter as he pleases 
; — can he read such books as he pleases — can he 
j have such a library as he pleases — can he hear 
I such preachers as he pleases — can he peaceably 
express such opinions as he pleases — can he 
openly belong to such political party as he 
! pleases ? Not at all — not one of them ; because 
I of the terrible dreams that shake the slave- 
holder nightl}' — because the whole people sleep 
in fear lest the words of Freedom for which our 
fathers bled, and on which our countiy rests, 
shall reach the ears of the slaves that cook their 
food, that kindle their fires and till their fields, 
and are ignorant and brutal, impulsive and re- 
vengeful. 

Compare the average value of the land in the \ 
Free States and the Slave States, as given by 
the census, and we shall see if, as a property 
institution, it should be extended to the virgin 
soil of the Territories. : v 

Average valu« \^ 
per oci e . 

New-England .- $20 27 

Middle States 2S 07 

Southern States 5 34 

Southwestern States, without Texas and Cali- 
fornia 6 26 

What a difference! 

Shall a few slaveholders be per.jitted thus 
to destroy the value of every man's land in the 
Territories? 

The glory and the strength of the nation are 
ever^-thing to American citizens. We must 
bear the blight which Slavery has put upon the 
jjnsent Slave States. We can well say that, 
as it now exists, it is not our fault — a disease 
of our Colonial life, so incorporated into the 
States where it exists that it cannot be eradi- 
cated ; but how shall we apologize to the out- 
raged moral sense of the whole Christian world 
if we deliberately inoculate all our new States, 
and through them the whole nation, with the 
loathsome disease, and make the American 
Union a curse and a disgrace to liberty through- 
out the world ! 

American citizens hold a peculiar relation 
to the questions connected ■with human liberty. 
For two hundred years Divine Providence 
seems to have given that precious deposit in 
some sort to us. Through a long course of 
generations we have been intrusted with it. 
We have published its great truths to the world 
of nations — have hazarded our national exis- 
tence upon it, and we have shed our blood over 



and over again to vindicate our opinions and 
our declarations. No matter how feeble, how 
poor or how unprepared we have been, we have 
always buckled on our armor to fight for Lib- 
erty. How we struggled up through the ditH- 
ciilties of colonial dependence — how we re- 
sisted the first attempt to oppress us, and peti- 
tioned, and prayed and forbore through fifteen 
years of oppressions — how we fought, and 
united, and fought again, and united 
more widely and more closely, and then 
became a united nation of rebels and traitors, 
and prevailed in an unequal strife, predicted 
to fail by the voice of all the world beside ! 
Those who would have been hanged have since 
been canonized. They are saints in the cal- 
endar of Freedom throughout the world, and 
ever since that time we have been a city set on 
a hill — a beacon light to the oppressed every- 
where. 

Every American citizen is responsible 
to History, I 

to Patriotism, 
to Conscience, and 
to God, 
for the exercise of his power and influence in 
behalf of liberty. The Past points him to his 
duty, and so does the Present, and above all 
the Future is dependent upon him. To History 
and t/ie Past and the Future — How a long line 
of historical glory comes down to us from the 
dead braves of our early periods of self-sacri- 
fice for Freedom ! How we exult as we 
seem to see on the now unwritten pages of his- 
tory millions of hardy, industrious, intelligent 
and free citizens filling that boundless North- 
west with the wealth and glory of Freedom, as 
it now exists wherever under our flag produc- 
tive industry is respectable ! To Patriotism — 
Who would betray this glorious country, and 
undo all that our fathers did — roll back the 
wheels of Liberty, and install the fetters and the 
lash and the ignorance and the brutality of 
Negro Slavery as the everywhere present 
American characteristic ! Who would give to 
that great West senility in youth — sterility in 
such a soil, and negro huts and slave pens in 
the midst of such a people and such a land- 
scape ! To Conscience and to God — Ah, there's 
the rub. What fearful evils to morals and 
religion must come in with the spread of 
Slavery and the reopening of the slave-trade in 
the hands of American activity and enterprise ! 
What defilement and blasphemy of the image 
of God ! What a degradation of free and 
honest industry, the only agent of modern pro- 
gress and civilization ! What a time when the 
mason and the carpenter and the blacksmith 
and the tailor and all the artisans and the farm 
hands shall be bought and sold like oxen and 
horses and mules ! 

When the holy prophet of the Lord, 
in the ecstacy of his divine inspirations, 
proclaimed to the indiscriminate future : 
" Wo to him that useth his neighbor's ser- 
oice without wajes, and giveth him not for his 
work" he was not announcing a curse to 
the unfortunate being who was deprived 



of his right to wages, and yet compelled 
to toil. It was not to the \'ictim, con- 
demned to lose his manhood in the qualities of 
the brute — not to the slave, but to his master, 
that the voice of retributive justice announced 
the woe. The master may add field to field — he 
may grow rich on the uncompensated labor of 
his slaves — he may meet no resistance to his 
exactions — no reprisals in those whom he has 
stripped of everything — he ijaay even demon- 
strata that their condition is improved by being 
unhumanized ; still, the divine woe to him 
that useth his neighbor's senice without wages 
may bring sterility to those fields — may send a 
canker into his wealth — may give his sons fierce 
and murderous passions — may mingle the 
dreams of terror with the dreams of guilt, 
when, in his midnight fancies, trodden hu- 
manity shall spring up and look around for 
vengeance. 

But how shall we vote ? Principles are im- 
portant, but without men to assert them they 
are powerless. Think what the country has 
some to by electing a man of dough in 1852. 
Shall we now go back to the man of wax whom 
we made Vice President in 1848, and accident 
made President? While in the cool North, 
how stiflf'and staimch he was ! Under the in- 
fluences of the warm South, how he softened 
' and yielded and took the shape they gave him — 
I and sent back to the North, how he has stiffened 
again in his Southern shape ! Shall we take 
him ? Or shall we take the man of putty, that 
I cold or warm, in any latitude, and in any 
[ hands is as clay in the hands of the potter? 
j Are these the men for this crisis, or do we want 
; a man of firmness and energy, and well-con- 
sidered and positive opinions ? 
j We are not left to doiibt tliat Col. Fremont 
is the man for the time and the place — devoted 
1 to Liberty and Union, from his boyhood — the 
; inflexible friend of the rights of the States as 
they now exist — and inflexibly md always 
opposed to the extension of Slavery to the free 
I Territories. Would you know if he be a real 
friend of Freedom, and likely to show himself 
a powerful friend if opportunity be given him, 
(anl the same of his rivals,) you have only to 
see wh.;t the enemies of Freed am and the 
friends of Slavery extension say of them all. 
How they curse and revile him — how they fear 
him — how with one accor . they in er his future 
conduct from his known character. They even 
declare that they will rebel against his very 
election. On the other hand, how they will 
allow no one to compete with his rivals. The 
only question seems to be between those rivals, 
not which is most the friend of t e South — 
they are alike in that — but which is most likely 
to defeat Col. Fremont. He alone is the can- 
didate of Freedom. 

It is, however, said that he has no antece- 
dents. But he is a man of most wonderful and 
consistent antecedents. Before he was nomi- 
nated his antecedents had made him the most 
famous and well known living American citi- 
zen, with perhaps one or two exceptions. Ac- 
tive and laborious beyond parallel, he has been 



6 



eqnally conspicuous. In 1833 — twenty-three 1 
years ago — he entered the public service of the 
United States, and with only occasional inter- 
vals has been in that service ever since. He 
had then an accomplished liberal education of 
which the history, the politics, the statesman- 
ship and the heroism of ancient and modern 
nations form a part in which he took an extra- 
ordinary interest at that early period, exhibit- 
ing and forming h'n taste for public affairs. He 
was educated at Charleston, the seat of South 
Carolina nullification, and was there during the 
time of its greatest virulence, when the great 
questions — the Tariff and Free Trade and 
Protection — State Rights — the strength and 
value of the Union, and the construction of 
the Constitution, were discussed by the great 
men of the nation as they have never been dis- 
cussed since, and they were by the ablest men 
South Carolina has ever produced brought to 
the near decision of insurrection, rebellion and 
treason in civil war. It was in the midst of 
such scenes that Col. Fremont entered the 
public service with a mind of thorough cultiva- 
tion, of wonderful capacity and activity. He 
came in, under General Jackson, on the side 
of Freedom, Patriotism, Liberty and Union, 
and he has never swerved from it. It was 
quite impossible that he should not feel such an 
interest in public afl'airs as to make him forever 
afterwards a careful observer and student of 
the nature, character and practical adminis- 
tration and policy of our Government, even 
if he had retired immediately to private 
life. But he continued in the service of the 
Government. He received appointments under 
General Jackson in 1833-35 and 36, under 
Mr. Van Bueen in 1838, under Mr. Tyler 
in 1842-45, under Mr. Polk in 1845 and '46, 
under General Taylor in 1848. Having con- 
quered California and been its Governor when 
the office of Governor embraced all the func- 
tions of government, legislative, judicial, and 
administrative, and under circumstances re- 
quiring a knowledge of international law. In 
December 1849, he was elected a Senatov of 
the United States and was such till March 4th, 
1851, a period of about fifteen months, and his 
entry into the Senate soon demonstrated that 
the great duties of that office had been the 
subject of great study and the numerous and 
important measixres that he introduced and 
advocated, showed the wisdom and breadth of 
Ms views. 

Dui-ing a large portion of his life he has 
been the commander and director, as well as 
the active leader, of bodies of men of iron 
wills and heroic bravery, under circumstances 
of great delicacy, difficulty, and danger, and 
with unexampled success, demonstrating his 
great executive ability. 

A scholar, a man of highly cultivated liter- 
ary tastes and of profound and various practi- 
cal science, he commenced as a schoolmaster 
and professor of mathematics, to support his 
widowed mother and his sister. Having made 
a cruise of two and a half years in the Navy, 
he became a surveyor and engineer, and an ex- 



plorer of a Continent. He passed through 
every grade of military life, from a lieutenant 
to a commander-in-chief. He was the con- 
queror and governor of California. Then 
a Boundary Commissioner, then a Senator 
of the United States. A traveled man in 
wildernesses and in courts, he is familiar with 
the huts of the savage and the palaces of 
civilization, and every form of life and man- 
ners, and his remarkable variety of life and 
of cultivation have made him a gentleman ac- 
cessible and acceptable to all classes of persons. 

When, with a fainily on his hands, without 
wealth and without friends, overcome, but not 
conquered, by his enemies, he was oflered his 
sword and his rank by the President of the 
United States, with an implied stain upon his 
name, and he spurned them both, and preferred 
to stand alone, in conscious rectitude, nothing 
but John C. Fremont, to begin the world 
anew, tiiere yousawthe man. Such are his an- 
tecedents. It is impossible that such a man, 
with such experience, and such ability, and 
such principles, such energy, and such love of 
true glory, should not be fit for any civil or 
military office, no matter how high. But there 
are antecedents which he has not. It is not 
possible to believe that he would coimsel cor- 
rupt bargaining to secure a political elevation. 
It is impossible to imagine him a trimmer, a 
time-server, a facile man, to be kneaded, and 
moulded and used by those who are about him. 
It is impossible to make him say that he is not 
John C. Fremont, but a mere party platform. 
He has no train of corrupt iretainers, who have 
for a quarter of a century been attached to his 
interests, and are entitled to his first and high- 
est favors and his bosom confidence. He never 
bit the hand that led him up to honor. He 
never betrayed his associates. He never aban- 
doned and betrayed the principles on which he 
had been elevated. He never betrayed Free- 
dcm that he might rise by Slavery. He never 
sold himself to a bigoted, proscriptive, secret 
and stealthy political faction, that he might be 
restored to the place and the power which lie 
could not retain when clothed with the influ- 
ence and patronage of the whole Government. 
He never approved and counseled disunion 
and I'ebellion if he should be found in the mi- 
nority, and he has never called the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise a boon from the 
North to the South. He. has not these ante- 
cedents. 

Then, with such a man and such a cause, on 
such a question, how shall we vote ? Listen 
to the voice from the North and the South, and 
the East and the West. Is it not the voice of 
God, saying : ''If you desire Freedom, say so 
— if you prefer Slavery, say so. Be ready 
with your answer?" 

A notorious tyrant is said to have wished 
that all his people had but one neck, 
that by one blow he might glut his ven- 
geance. That great figure is here real- 
ized. The freedom of that great unsettled 
territory, and through that of all the Northern 
States, is centred in Kansas. Her position 



and circumstances make her the connecting 
link. If she be free, all are free ; if she be 
cursed with Slavery, we are all enslaved. 

If the cause of Freedom do not triumph at 
this election, then before the 4th of March next 
Kansas and Utah will be admitted as Slave 
States. Utah has her Slave Constitution ready 
made and is only waiting for her opportunity. 
The Border-Ruffian Legislature will make a 
Slave Constitution for Kansas in Januarj', and 
the incoming Pro-Slavery President will come 
to Washington in Febniary, with all the officers 
and power and patronage of the Government 
in his hands, and in less than one week after 
he shall say, "yon see the Free-Soil movement 
has failed — return my friends to your old party 
sympathies — let us forget and forgive, and organ- 
ize an Administration accordinsr to the voice of 
the people," and there will be no longer any 
majority for Freedom in the House. A foreign 
mission — a seat in the Cabinet — a fat pecuniary 
office judiciously applied, and it is all over — 
and as Texas was annexed on the 2d day of 
March, 1845, two days before Mr. Polk was 
inaugurated, so if a Pro-Slavery President is 
elected, Kansas and Utah will be admitted as 
Slave States before he is inaugurated, so that 
the new Administration may find the Pro- 
Slavery policy of Atchison, Pieece and Doug- 
las the settled and immovable policy of the 
country. The neck of Liberty will be cut off. 

If Slavery should triumph and sweep over 
the Northwest, then to have voted against 
Freedom and for Slavery, what a reflection to 



treasure up ! — what an inheritance to leave to 
our descendants ! What a place voluntarily 
to take in history ! What a precious memory 
to one it is to know that in the days of the col- 
onial struggle for Freedom his ancestors were 
on the side of Liberty ! I cherish in my heart 
of hearts the knowledge that mine were at 
Long Island and Whiteplains and Harlem, no 
matter in how humble a station. How much 
would not the descendants of Tories give now, 
if they could blot out all memory, all history, 
all tradition, that their ancestors were arrayed 
against Liberty ! What shall our descendants 
say of us? We are called upon to express 
through the sacred and independent voice of 
the ballot-box our confidential and honest opin- 
ion on this question of Freedom in the Territo- 
ries. We cannot escape the expression of our 
sovereign will. It is easy by silence or through 
the secrecy of the ballot to conceal from our 
fellow-citizens the decision which we make. 
But from ourselves ? No ! From conscience ? 
No ! We may say openly, we are for Freedom, 
we may say we are for Americanism, we may 
say we are for Democracy, we may say we are 
for Whig principles, but if we neglect to vote, 
or do not vote right on this occasion, we shall 
vote against them all — and if Slavery shall pre- 
vail by one vote, what a rooted sorrow for our- 
selves, what a legacy of shame for our children, 
what a place in history for those whose shame 
shall be of sufficient importance to be there re- 
corded ! 

Oct., 1856. E. C. B. 



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